A display device including a liquid crystal panel for displaying images has been known. The liquid crystal panel doses not have a light emitting function and thus the display device of this kind includes a lighting device (a backlight) for illuminating the liquid crystal panel from a back side.
Recently, a display device including a round liquid crystal panel as in Patent Document 1 is known.
A conventional display device usually includes a rectangular liquid crystal panel. In the conventional liquid crystal panel, driver circuits such as gate drivers are arranged in a non-display area that is a frame-shaped area outside a display area. In recent years, gate drivers are included in pixels to be dispersed in a display area and thus a non-display area is significantly narrowed. This provides flexibility in designing a shape of the liquid crystal panel and thus the round liquid crystal panel is now available.
As described in Patent Document 1, the round liquid crystal panel is configured to display an image with light emitted by a round lighting device. The round lighting device includes a round light guide plate and LEDs that are arranged at predefined intervals in a circular pattern to surround the light guide plate.
In the round lighting device, the LEDs are opposed to a periphery of the light guide plate. Portions of the periphery opposed to the LEDs are light entering portions through which light from LEDs enter the light guide plate. The light travels through the light guide plate and exits the light guide plate through a plate surface of the light guide plate facing the liquid crystal panel.
A relatively larger amount of light is supplied to areas including the light entering portions of the round light guide plate and therearound and thus brightness tends to be higher in the areas. Light is less likely to be supplied to areas including portions of the periphery which are not opposed to the LEDs and therearound and thus the brightness tends to be lower in the areas. Namely, the round light guide plate includes portions with higher brightness and portions with lower brightness that alternately appear in a circular pattern.